What makes us feel stressed or overwhelmed about some aspects of our every day lives, and calm in relation to other aspects of our lives?
Intuitive Tools can help you manage your thoughts.
Why does one person stress about something that another person, in the exact same situation, does not?
Your friend is relaxed about getting dental work, but it terrifies you.
You’re comfortable advocating for your child’s needs at school, but your friend gets stressed.
It’s easy for you to give a work presentation, but your brother gets anxious about them.
You feel stressed interacting with a family member or colleague, while others don’t seem bothered by them at all.
Movies in your mind
Our minds constantly encounter and relate with thoughts and feelings that project as mental images; like a cartoon strip of constantly changing projections.
The ways in which we relate through these images has an enormous effect on the quality of our daily lives and relationships at home and work. It even impacts the ways in which we organize and create our lives.
Some of these images you may have little or no opinion about, therefore they don’t hold your attention for long, or they’re fun images, so you don’t hang on to them.
Other mental images draw you in just as you’re drawn into a dramatic or scary movie. These images you highlight or book-mark, because they have been ‘collected’ along the way on your diverse life journeys and experiences.
These book-marked images engage your reactionary self to respond in ways you may not always like or feel you can control; causing stress.
Let’s say you were bitten by a dog when you were six. Now when you see a dog, you feel a fear that’s difficult to suppress or manage; you feel that fear in your body as stress.
Based on an experience long ago, you created a mental image of dogs as dangerous, even though you know most of them are safe.
Once you learn to release that mental image, you won’t forget that dogs can bite, but you’ll no longer live by the fear that occurred when you were six.
When you’re around dogs, you’ll have a new, present-time relationship with them.
The good news
Some images are easier to manage than others, some are hidden from our immediate view; others are really blaring in our minds, but we don’t always know what to do with them.
Many communication conflicts happen as a result of two people having some of the same mental images that appear, on the outside, to be different.
The good news is these highlighted, bookmarked mental images are there for you to heal.
As you start seeing them clearly, you recognize the images are not actually ‘you.’
Once you’ve let go of them, you’ve healed yourself.
This gives you more calm, creativity and control in that area of your life, helping you feel happier, safe, and balanced. Something that felt ‘hard,’ now becomes easy.
Just as when the scary or dramatic movie is finished and you walk out, you easily distinguish what’s real from what’s engulfed your emotions for two hours.
When you release your attention from a mental image that has been controlling your response in some way, it’s like you just stepped out of the movie into the sunshine:
You have more space to choose what’s best and to recognize your strengths that may have been previously overshadowed.
Intuitive Tools
Intuitive Tools help you develop your ability to release mental images, see what causes you to react in a certain stress pattern, and distinguish between your true self and your reactionary self.
This deepens your commitment to yourself and your courage to follow your purpose, bringing forth more of you as a communicator, creator and in your relationships with others.
by Gwyneth R Flack, M.A.